


You're Warm

by extree



Series: Dark Castle [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dark Castle, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 13:17:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1746050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extree/pseuds/extree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumplestiltskin suspects that his caretaker might want to witness the annual meteor shower, but he can't quite bring himself to just <i>ask</i>. Until there's no other choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're Warm

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be adding any future Dark Castle oneshots I may write to this series.

Rumplestiltskin had been pacing outside Belle’s bedroom for some time, now. Up and down the torch-lit hall – up and down, fast and slow – pausing only once or twice to stand still in front of her door and just... stand. Once, he had even raised his arm as if to knock, but then, no, better not; she was probably asleep. Ah, but she read late into the night sometimes, didn’t she? He always knew when she had lost a battle with a particularly interesting book, because breakfast would be late each time she did. He couldn’t see any candlelight leaking under the heavy wooden door, though, so while it wasn’t an unrealistic thought, Rumplestiltskin decided that in all likelihood, the woman would be asleep.

But _still_. She might... Oh good grief, what a waste of time this was. But still he didn’t knock, nor did he even consider appearing in her room just to check, then vanishing before she had the chance to wake. The thought hadn’t even occurred. So instead he walked right back up and down, ever up and down, hands clasped behind his back or in front, fidgeting. After a few more moments of this, he started to head down the stone spiral staircase to get back to his spinning, but then the sudden creak of a door froze him mid-step.

“Do you need something, Rumplestiltskin?”

He breathed in quick and sharp. Damn.

Slowly he turned to see his caretaker standing in the doorway, looking quite lost and a little disoriented in her nightgown with a blanket draped loosely over her shoulders. He could see now that he had definitely woken her up; there was sleep in her eyes as well as confusion, and whether it was the pillow that had started the fight or not, it was her hair that appeared to have lost it. Spectacularly.

“Ah. Oh, no. Nothing. It’s nothing,” he spoke, a little hastily, waving her question away.

She frowned, and his pulse quickened. She wasn’t having it. Of course she wasn't. And now he was being cornered by his tiny, drowsy, bookish maid.

“Surely there must be something,” she said softly. “You’ve been walking past my door again and again for ages, now.”

“I don’t think so, dearie. You must have been dreaming. I can’t even begin to imagine why you would be dreaming about me walking about these halls, but that’s your business. Go back to sleep.”

Her sleepy eyes had been quite small to begin with, but then she narrowed them until there was just a little streak of bright blue left. She sighed and looked him up and down with pursed lips, nodded towards his feet and in a slightly lower voice said, “Your boots, handsome though they are, are quite loud, you know.”

He glanced down. Oh. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that the sound of his leather boots carried its way into her bedroom. He was an idiot to have been stomping up and down like that; now breakfast would likely be served late yet again – only this time he couldn’t blame it on her little hobby. And what use is a sleep-deprived maid? Might as well have hired an ogre to do the dusting. Ogres didn’t make him feel so nervous, either. But did this mean this was not the first time he’d accidentally woken her? He did use his magic to move about quite often, so he supposed the chances were slim. And did she like his boots or was she mocking him? Not that he cared. No, he didn’t care at all.

“Rumplestiltskin?”

Her concerned voice startled him from his almost frantic inner monologue and prompted him to snap out of his vacant look and fold his face into an attempt at a scowl.

“It’s nothing. Goodbye. Read a book. No, wait; go to sleep.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Alright. Good night, then.”

“Good ni- No. No, no, there was something.”

Belle sighed and turned to face him once more, her arms crossed over her chest, fingers of one hand slowly, demonstratively drumming against her arm. Rumplestiltskin swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. There was no coming back from this one, now. From the look on her face, he knew that if he changed his mind one more time, not only would breakfast be late, it’d be burnt beyond recognition.

“I, uh, I was wondering if you’ve ever seen a meteor shower, Belle.”

And suddenly she didn’t look quite as annoyed anymore, the disapproval melting from her face like snow under a blazing sun. She was so strangely fluid in that way, and Rumplestiltskin couldn’t for the life of him figure out how she did that; how she could let go of one emotion to latch on to the next until another mood struck her and she fluttered off again. As if it were easy. She made it look as natural as breathing, and there were times when he wished he could do the same, but for him, letting go was out of the question. He couldn’t risk losing focus. Not now. Not _until_.

“A meteor shower? No, never.”

“Would you like to see one?”

“What? Now?”

“Do you honestly think I would wake you up in the middle of the night to ask you if, at one point in your life, you might want to see a hypothetical meteor shower? Of course, now!”

Belle gave him that look; narrowed eyes, head tilted to the side just a little bit, a hint of a smile that he could never quite figure out if it was meant to mock or... Well, it didn’t matter. But that look meant a thousand words, most of them some variation on ‘rude’, ‘posturing’, or ‘grump’, and it disarmed Rumplestiltskin entirely, to the point where he almost, _almost_ considered apologizing for something or other, just so she would stop pinning him down with those confounding eyes. With a little start, he noticed his shoulders had drooped and his head had tilted forward just the slightest bit under the weight of her stare, so he snapped his chin back up and straightened his back. He could swallow his apologetic words, but it seemed his body wasn’t so cooperative.

“I would love to see that,” she finally spoke with a little smile. It seemed she knew her message had gotten through and she deemed it unnecessary to voice the general sentiment behind her stare. Good. Very good.

“Ah. Well then,” he said, clapping his hands together and weaving his fingers together. “We could watch from the north turret. The view’s always best, there.”

“The turret? I didn’t know there was a way to get up there.”

“Not for you, perhaps. Well, not on your own.”

“Oh. Oh, of course. I see.”

“Ready?”

“I think so. Yes.”

With a wave of the hand that was, admittedly, slightly more elaborate than was strictly necessary, Rumplestiltskin spirited them away to reappear on top of the Dark Castle’s north turret in a rich cloud of purple smoke. Once that had cleared, he turned around a few times and searched the sky, hoping it wasn’t too late. He had taken rather a lot of time trying to decide whether to wake her or not, after all. But within seconds, a bright white light flashed against the deep blue sky and disappeared behind the mountains. Two more followed, and he was filled with a sense of relief. So it wasn’t too late. He turned to make sure she had seen it too, but his still slightly sleep-addled maid was looking in the complete opposite direction with a blank look.

“Over there, dearie,” he said, gently nudging her arm with his elbow, and she spun around – the blanket puffing up as she turned, as if she’d somehow magicked it into a ballgown – and followed his gaze.

Streaks of brilliant white and unpredictable flashes were drawing her eyes (wider now, not a single trace of slumber) across the great starry sky. It was a spectacle, truly, and he hadn’t taken the time to enjoy it ever since his life had turned into... whatever this was. He had seen it many times in his youth, and then once or twice with his son, before... But while huge, swift arrows of burning light pierced the air and burned out with a flash, that’s not where Rumplestiltskin was looking.

How could her eyes be that bright still, under the dark cover of night? Stars were out, sure, but the moon behind them was veiled in a wispy layer of clouds, so there really wasn’t that much light for her eyes to reflect. It still startled him, sometimes – the color of them. Meanwhile he’d forgotten what his looked like. Well, no, he knew they were monstrous, of course. Some vile, unsafe color, no doubt. Some unnatural golden green seemed likely. He didn’t really want to know, it was just that... he wasn’t quite sure what color they were _before_ , anymore. One thing was for sure; they had never been anything like hers. In fact, he doubted there was anyone in this realm (or any of the others for that matter) whose eyes even remotely resembled those of Belle.

The quick and clever eyes in question blinked and fixed to his face all of the sudden, and he swiftly turned his head away and back to the snow-covered mountaintops in the distance. Safer to look there. Well, a little bit safer, at least. He must have been imagining the smile he saw from the corner of his eye, but he could not have imagined her moving closer – so close that her arm was touching his. No, that had actually just happened.

“What are you doing?”

“Standing closer,” she said as if he’d just asked her something ridiculously obvious. “It’s warmer this way.”

“Warmer?”

She giggled now, but it was soft and somehow gentle, and he couldn’t mistake it for mockery even if he tried.

“Yes. Warmer,” she repeated. Her voice closer to his ear was more textured, like a gently swaying mass of green in the distance will show itself to be thousands of many-colored leaves on a tree instead, if you only approach it.

But she had approached _him_ , and he would have been less shocked if it had been an actual, literal tree that had sidled up close to him, boughs creaking, roots scraping against the stone, bird nests bouncing off the branches and crashing down at his feet.

“It’s windy up here,” her leaves rustled.

Oh. Right. Summer had just started, promising and soothing, but it was still unsteady on its sleepy feet, and a nightgown was not the most appropriate choice for a nocturnal visit to the top of a towering castle turret in this mountainous land. Even that blanket couldn’t have been much help. He didn’t understand why that had drawn her so close to his body, though. How was that any better?

“But... I’m cold,” he said, wishing his voice didn’t sound quite so small.

She looked at him, eyebrows knitted together. “You’re cold, too?” she asked, and before he knew what she was doing, she had taken her blanket and draped it over both of them instead. What on earth? It didn’t even cover them much, but still he held on to his corner of the blanket and kept it there on his shoulder where she had put it regardless. Obedient. Dumbfounded. Like a harmless if slightly dimwitted dog, for heaven’s sake.

“N-No, dearie, that’s not what I meant. Don’t I _feel_ cold?”

And if his voice was small then, it was certainly threatening to leave him to his devices now, wavering and promising to abandon him on a sinking ship torn asunder by her genuinely concerned eyes and her body so close to his own.

“What do you mean? You think you feel cold? That you’re literally cold-blooded?”

“I just assumed,” he muttered with a little shrug.

He didn’t know what that look meant, but he knew there was absolutely no logical reason for it to be there. She reached up and then the touch of her soft hand at his cheek made his lips part and the words in his mouth disappear without a trace. He was stupefied. And her hand was _cool_ against his cheek. She wasn’t looking away. He felt her eyes on him like a steady pressure. What a strange creature she was; there in front of her was a truly beautiful phenomenon only to be observed once a year – the weather allowing – and instead she was looking at the beast who had bartered for her servitude.

“My hands have gotten cold since we got up here, but your cheek hasn’t. It’s warming my hand. Do you feel that?”

Could he feel that? He couldn’t feel anything else. He couldn’t quite speak, but he didn’t want to nod, because then she might... her hand might...

“So you thought you were cold to the touch? All this time?”

His lips parted, dry and slow, and somehow he managed to say, “Yes.”

“Well, you’re warm, Rumplestiltskin.”

She smiled as she said it, but that was no mirth in her eyes, no gentle mockery. It wasn’t quite pity either, but what else could it possibly be? If anyone in this world possessed the kindness and bravery to look upon his monstrous, accursed and fearsome form with something that was not loathing and terror, it would be Belle. But that was a colossal ‘if’.

And then came another thing he must have imagined; her thumb brushing softly against his cheek just once before her hand fell away and she turned to observe the celestial spectacle once more. The ghost of her touch still burned on his cheek and resonated with something buried deep in his chest, and he was filled with a sudden overwhelming urge to flee. If there had been a way Belle could have safely made it off the turret and back inside without his help, he might have disappeared already. But he couldn’t. He was stuck. Tied to her with a blanket and his own damned... _concern_.

“They’re not stars,” she said, leaning towards him a little bit as if telling him a secret, “like most people think they are.”

The sky. Focus on the sky. Where these things flashed and burned and disintegrated in quick succession.

“But you knew that, didn’t you, Rumplestiltskin?”

“Yes.”

“Because that book you saw me read, you read it too. Hm?”

When he realized what she had made him reveal, it was too late, because he had nodded. He had simply nodded like a simpleton, tipped over the cauldron, flooded the room with something that was altogether more difficult to mop up. And when he turned to scowl at her and weave some clever words together to try and distract or annoy or obfuscate, he realized that facing her had been a second mistake.

Because there was that knowing look again. All wisdom and confidence with just a little hint of amusement playing at the corners of her mouth. She was right, of course. Right about having read the book, naturally, but that’s not what she had so cleverly figured out and drawn out of him. It was true that he had seen her reading a certain collection of scientific texts and anecdotes on documented celestial events some time ago. And he remembered.

It must have been winter, because he could still envision her sitting near the fire, legs curled under her and a blanket over her shoulders, her small hands struggling to hold the rather large and heavy book until finally she gave up and sat with her legs crossed and the book in her lap instead. At first he thought the subject matter was too dry for her compared to her preferred epics and histories, and that that’s why she took twice as long to read it, but then he realized that she was reading it _twice_. Odd, he thought then. But she’d gotten much odder since. Like right now, for instance. Because there she was, smiling and gazing at him when the peasant villagers beyond the mountains were looking up at that same glorious sky, in all likelihood convinced that the world was about to end. (Which it wasn’t. Not yet, anyway.)

And when he was spinning away at his wheel earlier that night and caught a white streak and a flash reflected off the glass of one of his display cabinets and realized what time of the year it was, that vision of her sitting at the fire with her nose in that book rose from the deep dark waters of his memories, like a mermaid’s tail surfacing from the sea and glittering in the sun, and her name came falling softly from his lips. Then came the indecision and the pacing and the accidental rude awakening, and now, somehow, she had figured it all out. As if he were see-through. And _still_ her eyes were on him. Well, enough. He couldn’t take much more of this strange scrutiny. He must be firm.

“I didn’t bring you all the way up here to stare at _me_ ,” he growled with a stern edge to his voice.

She laughed as if he hadn’t growled but mewled like a kitten, shrugged, and with half a smirk twisting her lips she tore her gaze away to face the falling stars – no, meteors – again. In a contained but obviously amused voice, Belle quietly teased, “You started it.”

He simply could not have heard that right. Every muscle in his body stiffened, his jaw clenched, his eyes wide as could be and fixed to the mountains, though he wasn’t really looking. A second wave of that all-consuming urge to flee washed over him, but he managed to stand firm in the deluge for another few silent moments, until he felt her arm start to wrap around his, and his heart jumped and screamed and caused him to transport them back to the hallway, right in front of her door. He jerked back, the blanket falling around their feet and almost making him trip. So he stumbled into the wall, and with a little sound of surprise, he stood up straight and brushed off the imaginary dirt from his shirt sleeves.

When he had gathered what very little was left of his courage and senses and looked up, he caught Belle watching him closely with a curious expression on her face and something that looked deceptively like a hint of disappointment in her eyes.

“I uh. I have some business I need to take care of, I just remembered,” he lied. “So. Goodbye.”

He turned on his heels to head down the spiral staircase, but then a gentle tug at his shirt sleeve (why, _why_ did he insist on wearing such billowy shirts – what an amateurish tactical mistake) halted him. Her fingers were too close to his skin again, even through the fabric. What was she up to now? What would she say or do now to make him overbalance, make him want to overcompensate and half-heartedly lash out like a weakened wild animal or flee from her knowing gaze? He turned around, and she was close again, as she was in the forest. Smaller now on her bare feet, her eyes wide and kind, but no – that kindness could not be for him, could it? He’d woken her up in the middle of the night. He hadn’t even apologized. Why couldn’t he move? How had he let her become this tiny terror in his cursed life, tripping him up and making his breath catch in his throat for no good reason?

“Rumplestiltskin,” she started, coughing to cover up a nevertheless obvious little laugh, “that rug wasn’t here before.”

For heaven’s sake, why couldn’t she let these things simply pass without pointing them out? Was it that she meant to corner him in every room in his castle? Did she have a list and could she now cross out the main hall, her bedroom, the turret and the hallway in front of her room? He looked down at his feet where indeed there was now a thick, dark red rug where before there lay nothing but bare stone. He put on a feigned puzzled look.

“Oh? Wasn’t it?”

“I’m fairly sure it wasn’t.”

The laughter in her voice made him want to smile, but he mustn’t. She’d picked away at him more than enough, today. His armor was barely holding up.

“Well, I’m fairly sure it was. You were probably daydreaming whenever you swept the dust under it. That’s why you can’t remember.”

“I definitely didn’t sweep any dust under that rug.”

“Where else would you have swept it? Outside? Properly? Like a competent caretaker would? I think not, dearie.”

She tried to glare at him, but her laughter broke through to bounce off the stone walls, and the light in her eyes spilled over and made her entire face light up. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment to stifle another chuckle, and before he knew it, he had smiled back. How could he not? She had exhausted him.

“Thank you, Rumple. Good night.”

He nodded, blinked, watched her gather her blanket up from the floor and head into her room. When the door closed behind her with a soft _click_ , his shoulders slumped and he sighed as if he’d been holding his breath for ages. He decided to ignore the muffled giggle coming from the other side of the door that immediately followed. He simply hadn’t the energy to acknowledge it, so it didn’t happen. He hadn’t heard it. No.

Belle didn’t need to know he had conjured up that rug the moment her back was turned, and there was no reason he couldn’t kid himself into believing he’d tricked her. So he told himself he _had_ tricked her, and that she would just have to come to terms with the fact that every once in a while, a rug or a book or a dress might appear in his castle when she needed or wanted it, and that sometimes, even, the clouds in the sky might mysteriously clear the view for a rare celestial event that would otherwise have been partly obscured by the normal weather conditions for that night.

In the main hall, his wheel span quick until he slammed his palm against it and stilled it in an instant. His jaw dropped, his eyes were wide, the sting in his hand where the impact was hardest barely registered. Because the ghost of her voice rang in his ears and filled his chest with a terrifying warmth that crept up to his face and burned on his cheeks.

_Rumple._


End file.
